Qualifier - Thin Crust Pizza (40%)

This might seem redundant or overly obvious, but the place has got to have pizza that is made in the New York style, which to me means a thin crust.  Ultimately it's all about the pizza, right?

 This is where it gets kind of tough for me to put into words what makes it "New York" pizza.  A lot of the chain pizzas have thin-crust, but does that make it New York style pizza?  Definitely not.  Now, I don't want to be too rough on the pizza chains, because there have been times and places where they were the only pizza I could get, and they came to my rescue.  A day with chain-pizza is better than a day with no pizza at all. 

So a lot of chains are not excluded from consideration based on this criteria.  Chicago-style pizza definitely IS excluded.  If all you've got is a big thick pizza in a pan, then you get a big fat zero in my ranking system.